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CHAPTER XV
Legends of Saints and Martyrs
Discovery of the Fraud -- The Genuine Persecutions --
The Manufacture of Martyrs
DISCOVERY OF THE FRAUD
THERE came a stage in the evolution of the ancient world when
the old creeds decayed, and new religions and moralities arose in
every country out of their smoldering remains. Asia had passed
through a somewhat similar stage hundreds of years earlier, and
Buddha and Kong-fu-tse had pointed the true moral: the rejection of
all religion. There were philosophers in Europe who urged the same
conclusion, for Greece had already produced several schools of
skeptics; but the Greco-Roman world was so sodden with superstition
that "progress" generally took the form of a new religion. A
hundred religions offered their myths, and displayed their ritual,
in the cosmopolitan cities of the Roman Empire. A hundred
reformers, from Persia to Spain, groaned over sin and superstition,
and formed little sects, in that age of purple and gold, to
cultivate with them the chaste and austere virtue of the lily.
Jesus was one of these; and one of the most obscure. No
authentic literature mentions him until nearly a century after his
death. Hardly do we descry the slenderest outlines of his
personality in the only literature about him which we can trust. We
know that the rigid frame of Judaism had, like that of all other
religions, yielded to the solvent of the new thought. There were
still Pharisees, or Fundamentalists; but there were also Sadducees,
liberal and humanitarian Rabbis like Hillel, eclectic philosophers
like Philo, and ascetic rebels and purists like the Essenes and the
Therapeuts. Out of the latter school emerges, very dimly, the form
of the prophet of Nazareth, preaching no distinctive message except
one -- the approaching of the end of the world -- which his modern
followers are only too eager to disavow, sinking back into
obscurity when he pays the penalty of his revolt.
Obscurity! Is his name not stamped upon a new era of world-
history? Have not fifty generations of men bowed with awe and
reverence at the mere sound of his name? Do not five hundred
million people in this age of light and power proudly confess
themselves his followers? What can you mean?
I mean precisely what I say. Jesus at his death sank back into
the obscurity of the humbler folk of Galilee. His most ardent
followers, even in the Gospels, returned to their nets. Ten years
later a small group of ignorant men cherished his memory in
Jerusalem. Thirty years later small groups of generally ignorant
men and women held suppers in his name in a score of Greek and
Roman cities. The new sect was one of the least successful, the
least respected, of that sectarian world. What happened later. ...
Yes, you say, precisely what happened later is the evidence to
which I close my eyes. Out of that humble beginning God made the
mightiest religion that ever was on this earth. Grant all the
lowliness, the apparent poverty, of the commencement. Christianity,
like Jesus, was born in a stable. Within a few centuries it lived
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in the palaces of kings. Christianity seemed a feeble and
unpromising growth amongst the sturdy religions and philosophies of
the time. Within five hundred years it commanded the allegiance of
the world, and they were forgotten. It refused to temporize with
any one of your creeds and philosophies; and your scholars can
hardly discover their remains today when they sift the ruins of the
past. It refused to temporize with the most powerful empire the
world had yet known; and in a few centuries that empire was dead,
and the world raised to its altars the tens of thousands of humble
folk -- slaves, women, even refined young girls -- who had spat
defiance at its tortures and perfumed that decaying world with the
fragrance of their lives.
Quite so. That is the next part of my program. But let us
proceed reasonably. Common sense says: Yes, a very wonderful
religion, one of the most powerful in history, arose in the name of
Jesus, but there might be many causes for its success. Common sense
says that possibly Christianity made Jesus, instead of Jesus making
Christianity. Common sense reminds you that there is hardly a point
on which religious writings and sermons, which are so eager to make
us truthful and good, tell the truth. We will approach this
"triumph of Christianity" with an open mind; and first of all we
will examine this wonderful body of saints and martyrs which is
supposed to have given a unique glory and an irresistible power to
the early Church.
Last night I passed through the chief park in the city of
London, and I lingered for a few moments to listen to the orators
in the open space near the gate. It is forty years since I first
heard them, and the change that has come over the scene is
remarkable. Even twenty years ago a tense, excited crowd gathered
about two platforms: the Christian and the Atheist. Now there is
Catholic Truth and Christian Evidence and heaven knows what; but
the mass of the crowd gathers round two hoarse and horsy men who
are selling infallible predictions for the next race. A couple of
hundred idle folk listen idly, coming and going, to Catholic Truth,
and I stand on the fringe for a moment to hear it.
A callow youth, probably a clerk or grocer's assistant who
reads pamphlets when he ought to be courting at the week-end, is
giving London a learned and of course original dissertation on the
grand old pun of Jesus to Peter: "On thee will I build my Church."
I am for a moment tempted to paralyze him by asking him what he
supposes the Aramaic word for "Church" is, or what Galileans of the
time of Jesus would have made of the mysterious word (an
interpolation of the second century). But I refrain. The answer
would probably be that we have to trust the text of the Gospels as
"the Church" would see that no false writings about Jesus would get
into circulation!
These Catholic orators imagine ancient Judea -- they seem to
think that the Gospels were composed in Judea -- to have been as
sober and well organized as a section of Pennsylvania. They have
the most weird ideas of ancient history, and they are forbidden to
read accurate versions of it. Hilaire Belloc once, in conversation
with me, expressed the opinion, in his customary dogmatic and
scornful way, that Harnack was a fool. Let me turn over for you a
page in the Migne (Roman Catholic) collection of the Fathers which
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is better than many tons of sermons and pamphlets. I turn to a
decree of a Council held in Rome under the presidency of the Pope.
The editors have put it in the year 494 A.D., and they make the
Pope Gelasius. But I agree with certain modern scholars who think
that the Pope was Damasus ("the tickler of matrons ears," as some
of his priests called him), and that the Council was held between
370 and 380.
The Pope is nervous about the kind of literature which, even
in the fourth century, and in Rome, is circulating amongst the
faithful. Evidently -- that is why it is impossible to put the
Council back to 494 -- the educated pagans are making fun of
"Catholic Truth." The decree says this. So the Pope and his clergy
solemnly warn the faithful that a vast amount of spurious
literature is current.
They even draw up a list of some of the books; and the
Catholic who trusts the Gospels on the ground that "the Church"
would guard the faithful against false literature will be surprised
if he reads the list. It contains a score of spurious Gospels
(there is one in the name of each of the apostles, besides our
four), Epistles and Acts. Our four Gospels are just a selection out
of a muddy stream of legendary literature; and "the Church" had let
all this have a free run for at least two centuries (to the time of
Constantine) before it made any protest. There was no control
whatever of Gospel-writing. But by the fourth century the Church
found it prudent to suppress wild stories about "the boyhood of
Jesus" and picturesque accounts of "the midwife of Jesus," and so
on.
From the second (or end of the first) century onward,
therefore, the new religion was confessedly nourished on spurious
literature. And the beginning of persecution opened to the forgers
a new and magnificent field. Very rightly and naturally the early
Christians treasured the memory and the remains of the few priests
and many simple-minded maids and matrons who had died rather than
forswear what they believed to be the truth. A particular church
became -- naturally again -- proud of the number of its martyrs, of
the beauty of their lives, of their "miracles," even of their noble
birth or high position. And we have seen enough about this myth-
making ancient world, from Judea onward, to find it just as natural
that a legendary and utterly mendacious literature grew up to meet
the Christian sentiment. If a church had no martyrs, it made them.
The spurious literature that existed in the fourth century is
a mere trifle in comparison with the river of forgeries of the
early Middle Ages. But it was serious enough to bring discredit on
the Church. The "infidels," says the decree, are laughing at the
Christians because their stories of martyrs are full of historical
errors and patent absurdities. The Pope names, in particular, the
accounts of St. George (who is still treasured by British
Catholics), St. Quiricus, and St. Julitta, and says that they were
probably written by heretics. He specifies a large number of
spurious works, and he gives a general caution that many others are
in circulation.
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Incidentally, let us notice that the Pope includes in this
first "index of prohibited books" that famous forgery, the letters
of "King Abgar" to Jesus and of Jesus to King Abgar. And only a few
years ago a priest of the Church of England had the effrontery to
try to impose these spurious letters on his ignorant congregation
as a recent discovery!
This list is generally called, as I have called it, an "index
of prohibited books." But do not take the phrase literally. The
faithful were not "prohibited," in the modern sense, to read the
books. The books were condemned as false, as forgeries; but there
were no penalties for reading them. And people not only continued
to read them, but the forgers got busier than ever. The Roman
Empire was sinking; and with it civilization was leaving the
planet, except in China, for many centuries. The gloom of the
Middle Ages was setting in. The educated free workers of the Roman
Empire were succeeded by a besotted population of feudal workers of
whom not one in a thousand could read. The literate minority even
were so densely ignorant that the grossest forgeries could be
imposed upon them. Those were the days when the voluminous
collection of stories of saints and martyrs, of which the Catholic
is so proud, emerged into the light of the new Europe.
The Protestant may impatiently say that he is not interested
in the Catholic's saints and martyrs. He is, and he is bound to be.
All his literature boasts of the divine power that sustained the
early Church in its conflict with the Roman Empire; and the details
on which that boast is based are generally spurious. The modern,
who cries a plague on both Catholic and Protestant houses, will,
nevertheless, find a singular interest in the spectacle of a
religion being imposed upon a world partly by means of the most
extensive and audacious mass of forgeries that the world has ever
known.
From the sixth century until the Reformation this mass of
fraudulent literature circulated with impunity. Much of it was as
grotesque as the legends which had circulated in the Roman world.
but the educated minority of the pagan world had smiled at the
legends, whereas the most learned men of the Middle Ages accepted
the wild legends of the saints and martyrs. They paid, as a rule,
no attention to history, to facts. The rage was theological
speculation. What men like Abelard or Roger Bacon might have said
of the legends -- it is useless to speculate. It was not worth
while to incur the fiendish tortures of the Inquisition by
examining whether St. George had really fought a dragon, or St.
Denis had carried his head in his bands.
During the Renaissance, of course, scholars smiled at these
things. So did Popes, when they happened to be scholars; which was
not often. It did not matter as long as you respected one very
valuable set of forgeries: those on which the Temporal Power of
Rome was based.
At last, when the darkness of the ages of faith began to be
relieved by the slow dawn of modern knowledge, the Church got a few
historical scholars; and the moment they turned their scholarship
upon the stories of the early saints and martyrs, even the most
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Catholic of them put their fingers to their nostrils and closed
them. There was Cardinal Baronius, Librarian of the Vatican
Library, almost elected Pope, who in the year 1600 published an
ecclesiastical history ("Annales Ecclesiastici") in thirteen folio
volumes. It is by no means critical; it is intensely Roman
Catholic. Yet when the learned Cesare had to weave the stories of
the martyrs into the web of his history and came to examine the
legends closely, his scholarly feelings revolted. A hundred years
later, Father Pagi, a learned Franciscan friar, revised Baronius;
and his pen itched even more than that of the Cardinal had done.
But the great slaughterer of the martyrs in those early days
was M. Le Nain de Tillemont, a French priest of the second half of
the seventeenth century. Tillemont was a good Catholic, but he was
a good man and a very learned man. Moreover, the world had won a
little freedom, and Tillemont was no ordinary priest, but a wealthy
man, living on his estates, going from library to library to
compare editions and manuscripts. Even Catholic scholars have now
got a long way beyond Tillemont in criticizing the legends, but he
did grand work, for his age. Strictly orthodox, of the Puritanical
Jansenist school, he had, nevertheless, a tinge of Voltairean humor
and satire; and his criticisms of the stories of martyrs, though
discreet, for he dreaded the censor, read entertainingly today. In
fact, his "Memoirs to Assist the Ecclesiastical History of the Six
First Centuries" (a curious slip, that, for a great scholar)
appeared mainly after his death (1698). The work had just reached
the age of the martyrs (Volume V) when he died. The remaining
twelve volumes -- I have just run through a beautiful old edition
of them -- cut the poor martyrs to bits once more, boiled them in
oil, and buried the fragments.
The ordinary believer has a vague idea that it is only
Rationalist critics, or at the most wicked Modernists, who strip
the early history of the Church of these fragrant blooms of
sanctity and martyrdom. He could not make a greater mistake. We saw
that the criticism of the Old and New Testaments, the detection of
forgeries and interpolations, has been conducted almost entirely by
learned theologians. From the group of Rationalist critics
(Robertson, Drews, Smith, Couchoud, etc.) I have, on purely
historical grounds, derived nothing. No theological authority on it
today would say less than old Tillemont; and there are few who
would not say a great deal more. I am content to follow these
religious writers.
About half a century after the death of Tillemont a scholar,
Prosper Lambertini, was by some rare mistake on the part of the
Holy Ghost, chosen to fill the See of Peter. Benedict XIV, as he
was called, knew well that the sacred books of his Church, to say
nothing of its popular literature, were full of lies; and he, being
a scholar, did not like lies. It was a liberal age, and Prosper was
almost a friend of Voltaire. The great French skeptic gracefully
dedicated his "Mahomet" to the Pope; and the Pope gracefully
defended Voltaire against a charge of writing bad Latin. Prosper
more or less -- a great deal less than more, for the clergy were
ignorant and hostile -- reformed the "Martyrology." You should read
it today, and you will wonder how much it differed from "The
Arabian Nights" before Prosper cut out the more daring myths!
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However, there remained the Breviary, with its short life of a
saint for every day. Prosper directed a liberal Jesuit to report on
it, for the purpose of reform; but when the bulky and ruthless
report reached him, be sighed, and put it on the shelf. So the
official books of the Catholic Church, the Breviary and the Missal,
which the priest reads every day, are still full of what the
Catholic scholar regards as lies and forgeries.
I beg his pardon. Of course he does not admit "lies" and
"forgeries." I am putting my own rude language into his suave
mouth. Read the modern Jesuit and Bollandist, Father Delehaye. The
Bollandists are the Jesuit associates and successors of Bollandus
who, in the seventeenth century, made a voluminous collection of
the "Acts of the Saints." And the modern Bollandists, and scores of
Protestant theologians, dissect that body of fairy tales as
cheerfully as butchers cut up sheep.
Let me give the Catholic reader one further illustration. He
is permitted, even encouraged, to read the "Catholic Encyclopedia."
Ordinarily I would not recommend any person to waste his time in
that unentertaining and unprofitable way. The work is a tissue of
inaccuracies, antiquities, and lies. But the truth about the
martyrs is now so well known that even this egregious
"Encyclopedia" has to admit a good deal of it. Look up, for
instance, the article on St. George. "Remembering," says the Jesuit
writer, "the unscrupulous freedom with which any wild story, even
when pagan in origin, was appropriated by the early hagiographers
to the honor of a popular saint," we have to be on our guard. That
is a very rare morsel of Catholic Truth. Father Thurston tells you,
coldly, that all that we know about St. George, the patron of
England and for ages the most popular saint in Christendom, is that
he existed, and that he was martyred in or near Lydda some time
before 300 A.D. What a disillusion after the old story!
Even the most orthodox reader will recognize the force of the
modern criticism of martyr-legends when so retrograde a work as the
"Catholic Encyclopedia" is compelled to admit it. Usually its
writers deny the most certain facts of science or history with an
ease that must command the envy of a politician.
THE GENUINE PERSECUTIONS
You are, I hope, familiar with the traditional story. If not,
let me for a moment imagine myself back in the pulpit -- it makes
my flesh creep -- and tell it to you as, I suppose, I told it to an
admiring thousand in my twenties.
By about thirty years after the death of Christ, after the
disheartened apostles had returned to their fishing boats on the
Sea of Galilee, the new faith had spread so triumphantly through
the Roman world that the Emperor Nero, in his Golden House on the
Palatine Hill, marked it and trembled. With all the might of Rome
he flung himself upon the followers of Jesus. The most diabolical
tortures were devised for them; and in their thousands, in every
province of the Roman Empire, they went smiling to their atrocious
deaths. But the blood of the martyrs was the seed of Christians.
Twenty years later Domitian saw the hated religion overrunning the
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Empire, and again the decree went forth that it was to be "rooted
out" of the planet. Thirty years later it had grown so miraculously
that crowds came up to the tribunals in a single remote province of
the Empire, and Trajan renewed the bloody attempt to extirpate it.
Ten times in two hundred and fifty years the mighty forces, the
fiendish tortures, the unquenchable hatred of Rome were set in
motion against it; and refined maids of high birth braved the lions
and the shame which is worse than death (though less unpleasant),
and mothers were torn from the arms of loving husbands, and ....
My sermon style has degenerated a little, I fear. But this is
still the belief of the great majority of Christians: that ten
times the scythe of the Roman power went bloodily through the whole
Christian world, and ten times it raised again its proud head to
heaven, until God, content with its heroic endurance, gave it
peace. ),") and Lactantius, the Christian historians of the fourth
century, say so. Nero, says (Chap. vii), tried to eradicate the
very name of Christian and hunted the faithful "through every
province of the Empire." Domitian, he says, made the same effort to
"root it out." And so on. Motive? The inspiration of the devil, of
course. Result? To enrich the world with hundreds of thousands of
martyrs, whose beautiful stories still bring tears to the eye ...
And, sad to say, the cold historical truth is that we cannot admit
more than two, or at the most three, "general persecutions." So
Professor Gwatkin, the ecclesiastical historian of Cambridge
University (England), sums up the matter in the authoritative
"Dictionary of Religion and Ethics." We may be content with his
verdict, and need not draw upon the more radical, and sometimes
strained, criticism which reduces the persecutions still further.
Decius and Diocletian, in the third and fourth centuries, set afoot
general persecution. Valerian, in the third century, possibly did
the same, in milder terms. The rest is mob-movements locally
against the unpopular Christians.
Why Rome, one of the most tolerant of powers, persecuted will
be made clear as we proceed. Each Emperor had his own reason for
enforcing or supporting the law. The oldest Roman law, the Law of
the Twelve Tables, forbade any man to practice any religion not
formally admitted by the state. But the state was remarkably
hospitable and admitted all kinds of religions. Christianity was
detested mainly for three reasons. First, and from the start,
because its meetings were secret, and generally by night; so they
were put down as orgies if not conspiracies. Secondly, the
Christians spoke with infinite scorn of the beliefs of their pagan
neighbors, of the official deities of Rome. Thirdly, as time went
on, because in proportion as the difficulties of the Empire
increased, the Christians became increasingly disloyal, refusing
service and almost exulting in its enfeeblement.
A number of competent modern scholars doubt if there ever was
a persecution under Nero. We have serious reasons to think that
there was. The passage in which the Roman historian Tacitus
describes the persecution half a century later is strongly
suspected of Christian adulteration. It speaks, not only of Jesus
being crucified under Pontius Pilate, but of the martyrdom of "an
immense multitude" of Christians at Rome. There were only a few
thousand (as we shall see) two centuries later, so the phrase is
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very doubtful. But the style generally of the long passage, the
fearful hatred of Nero that spread through the Church, the red glow
of some persecution in Revelation, the early claim that Paul (the
martyrdom of Peter is generally rejected, and is not claimed until
about 170) was beheaded at Rome, all point to a severe persecution.
Let us take the familiar story. Nero, who was of unbalanced mind,
was suspected of setting fire to Rome, so as to have the glory of
rebuilding it. He turned the blame on the Christians and
mercilessly punished them. But we have no reason whatever to think
that he persecuted them outside Rome.
Now let us turn to the worthy Tillemont. He wrote his history
in a singular way, with one eye on the censor and one on truth. The
text of each chapter he composed out of fragments of more orthodox
historians, such as Baronius. Then, at the end of each volume, he
added a series of lengthy and destructive notes.
The first martyr of the Neronian persecution is St. Paulinus,
and in his life there is a reference to "the Governor of Tuscany."
Says Tillemont slyly: "We leave the learned to examine whether
there were governors of Tuscany under Nero." Of course not; it is
like mentioning Presidents of the United States under Queen
Elizabeth of England. The life of Paulinus, Tillemont concludes,
after examining it, is of unknown (but very late) age and no
authority. Poor Paulinus. The next Roman martyr is St. Torpetus;
and we are told that the account of him is "one of the worst pieces
imaginable." The next is St. Vitalis; and the life of Vitalis is a
ninth-century production, and "contains more words than facts." St.
Ursicinus follows; and he also is under a cloud, for there has been
a fatal confusion of names and the legend is valueless.
St. Hermagoras comes next to the block; and, as the seat of
his martyrdom, Aquileia, is said to be "a town of the province of
Austria" (which is very much like describing Mexico City in the
sixteenth century as "a town in the province of Bolivia"), his head
soon falls. Then we reach the very touching and beautiful tale of
St. Thecla, which nuns still read with blushing admiration.
Thecla was a "very beautiful and very learned" (of course)
pagan lady who was converted by Paul (the tent-maker), and her
constant and tender companionship alleviated the burden of his
apostolate. She took a life-vow of virginity; and, when the
persecution broke out, the pagans thought it a relevant punishment
to remove all her clothes before she was presented to the lions.
But even the lions, Tillemont elegantly (with just a spice of
irony) quotes from the legend, "did not dare to violate her
virginity by too free a look." (She is said in the Roman Breviary
to have been ninety years old.) So the lions -- I mean on account
of her vow -- veiled their eyes, and licked her feet, and even the
fire would not burn her, and so on. Tillemont ungallantly proves
that the sources of these stories are absolutely worthless, and
that, according to the most reliable of the documents this "first
lady martyr," as the Greek church calls her, died peacefully in her
bed at an advanced age -- if there ever was such a person.
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Next for trial are Sts. Gervasius and Protasius; and this is
really interesting. There came a time, in the fourth century, when
St. Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, found himself in bitter conflict with
the Empress, a Christian but an Arian. In order to inflame and
sustain the zeal of the faithful, St. Ambrose (the story runs) was
directed in a series of visions to dig in the ground and discover
a number of bodies of the early martyrs. Thus came to light the
precious bodies of Gervasius and Protasius; and such was the zeal
of the faithful that Ambrose beat the Empress.
Tillemont fastens truculently on this story. The bodies were
of a remarkable size, and Tillemont seems to wink as he notes
Ambrose's explanation, that this at least proved them to be
centuries old. Then, as now, people were supposed to be bigger "in
the good old times." Further, no less a person than St. Augustine
was at that very time in Milan, and he tells us that the bodies
were miraculously "uncorrupted," whereas Ambrose tells us that he
found only bones -- which lets us see how myths grow. In the end
Tillemont proves that the remarkable story of Gervasius and
Protasius -- strange that Ambrose knew even their names, he says --
is built entirely upon spurious works attributed to Ambrose, and is
quite worthless.
Tillemont does not venture to impugn Ambrose, though he makes
a few nasty innuendoes. We need not be so diplomatic. Ambrose found
an old cemetery and exploited it. "Gervasius and Protasius" were
probably Goths from the north, or brigands from the mountains, who
had been buried there. Their relics are still in great honor in the
Church of Rome.
So Tillemont admits the Neronian persecution, but he
annihilates every martyr (except Peter and Paul) he mentions in
connection with it. I am not going to follow him through his ten
volumes, but these terrible notes scratch the halos from saints and
martyrs at the end of every volume. He next notices the famous "St.
Denis the Areopagite." The story will not bear criticism, he shows.
St. Domitilla, a martyr of noble birth, follows. A tissue of
contradictions, says Tillemont; there is no proof that the lady was
martyred at all. St. Linus and St. Clement, Popes and martyrs, fare
little better.
In short, the learned and pious historian covers the first
century of the Christian era, in which, according to bs and common
belief, there were two fierce general persecutions; and he does not
leave a single martyr's crown (except those of Peter and Paul, whom
he dare not challenge) undamaged. And it is much the same in the
second century. He throws serious doubt on or dilutes away the
stories of four out of five of the martyrs mentioned in his text.
He takes up the wonderful story of St. Caesarius. "I think,"
he drily concludes, "the safest way is to leave him in the number
of those whose holiness we are acquainted with, but of whom we know
nothing else." Of the story of St. Hyacinthus be unkindly says that
it "looks very much like a fable." St. Eudocia's life is based upon
"a very sorry piece," a piece of "mere fiction."
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Then we get one of the big events of the calendar, the
martyrdom of St. Romulus and eleven thousand Christian soldiers!
This preposterous story moves the historian to wrath. It is, he
says worthy of the Greek who wrote it." This audacious Greek,
Metaphrastes, the greatest writer of martyr legends -- lived in the
tenth century!
So they come up for execution once more, one after the other.
St. Evodius: no evidence that be died a martyr. St. Ignacius: story
reeks with errors. St. Eustachius; a "mere romance." St. Sophia:
record full of anachronisms. St. Eleutherius -- here the good
priest seems to be getting tired of it. Of Eleutherius he says that
there is "no ground to assert that he was a martyr, or even a man."
The story of the next, St. Babbina, is "outrageous language." The
record of St. Symphorosa is spurious, full of errors. And so on.
The truth is that no man now knows how many or how few
Christians were put to death by the Roman authorities. For every
score of martyrs that Tillemont slays, the modern Bollandist Father
Delehaye slays a hundred, and more independent critics may be said
to slay a thousand.
Nero's persecution in Rome, if we admit it, was the work of a
man whom all historians now regard as more or less insane; and
Tacitus implies that it was not liked by the Romans themselves.
Moreover, it is too often forgotten that "an immense number" of
good pagans met their death under Nero. A later pagan writer
composed a "martyrology" of the men and women who were victims of
Nero's insanity; and it has been suggested that the Christians
borrowed this model, if not many of the pagan names in the book.
Domitian, the next persecutor, also confined his action to
Rome, and, as far as we can ascertain, only enforced the law
against a number of prominent men who professed the illicit
religion. And Domitian, again, was a "persecutor" of pagans as well
as Christians: a man of sinister and gloomy character, living in an
atmosphere of plots. The statement of the Christian historian
rises, which is followed by every later Christian historian, that
he tried throughout his Empire to "root out" the very name of
Christ, is entirely false.
Trajan and Marcus Aurelius, who are counted as the third and
fourth persecutors, were men of very different, and very high
character. All the Stoic Emperors detested Christianity as a mean
superstition and an anti-social philosophy. The Empire was
laboring, and a sect which cut off its members from civic and
imperial life deserved no indulgence. They let the law stand -- it
is quite false that they issued persecuting decrees -- and
interfered little with the local passion which occasionally flamed
out against the Christians. The only historical sign of any large
persecution is the famous letter in which Pliny, Governor of
Bithynia, asks Trojan's permission -- that is the real purport of
the letter -- not to enforce the law. The authenticity of the
letter is seriously disputed and some of the rhetorical passages in
which Pliny describes the temples as deserted, and whole regions
converted to Christianity, are quite inconsistent with the known
facts. In any case, as Tertullian afterwards said, Trajan's reply
"partly frustrated" the local passion.
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Septimius Severus, the next persecutor, a hundred years after
Trajan, is said to have been alarmed at the number of prominent
Romans who became Christians and to have enforced the law to some
extent. We have, however, very few accounts of genuine martyrs. The
succeeding two Emperors were too vicious to persecute, and the
next, Alexander Severus, actually put a bust of Christ in the
private chapel of his palace. He was succeeded by Maximin, and the
legends put thousands of martyrs under the "bloody tyrant." But,
says the learned religious historian Professor Gwatkin, "We hear of
no execution!"
Decius (249-251), Valerian (257), and Diocletian (303) were
the only general and systematic persecutors. There is no doubt in
the mind of any historian that in trying to suppress or check
Christianity -- at first in each case by the lighter penalties --
they were consulting the welfare of the state, which was then
sinking. Professor Gwatkin himself remarks that many of the
Christians, so far from being willing to defend the Empire, were
"half inclined to welcome the Goths and Persians as avengers." The
Pope insolently and openly defied Valerian at Rome: and
Diocletian's decrees were torn down by Christians in his own palace
who relied on the protection of his womenfolk. Before Diocletian
the Church had had forty years of peace, and it had grown
sufficiently to make its anti-patriotic teaching a matter of
concern. Yet in not one of the three decrees of Diocletian is the
death sentence imposed.
THE MANUFACTURE OF MARTYRS
The work so auspiciously begun by M. Tillemont has been in
modern times so zealously and effectively pursued that a martyr's
crown or a saint's halo must now be worth less than a dollar even
in the Church of Rome. Relatively few crowns remain on the historic
heads. Indeed relatively few historic heads remain. In batches of
from four or ten to twenty thousand the long-revered figures have
melted into the nebulosity of popular legend or priestly strategy.
And a large number of the martyr-figures which are retained as
historical, shorn of their golden miracles, are retained on grounds
which a profane historian would deem insufficient for an honest
affirmation.
For once the zealous Protestant rubs his hands at the work of
the critics. He wants no saints and martyrs, no relics or statues,
no legends or martyrologics. Let him thank the "higher critics" in
this department that they have justified the work of the
Reformation. But let him not be too hasty in his congratulations.
In slaying the martyrs these modern historians have destroyed one
of the time-honored arguments for the supernatural origin of
Christianity, and in exposing this prodigious volume of untruthful
literature they have given us proof of a tendency of the new
religion which is far from complimentary to its ethic. Let me, as
usual, first put before the reader as many facts as can be
conveniently packed within narrow space. And, again in harmony with
my usual procedure, I do not turn to extreme Rationalists or
mythologists or psychoanalysts for my "facts." I am going almost
entirely to rely on Catholic writers; and the little that I shall
borrow from Protestants is endorsed by Catholic writers. Indeed, as
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I have already observed, the results of this modern criticism are
so certain that even the very conservative "Catholic Encyclopedia"
reduces hundreds of the more famous saints and martyrs of old to a
mere formula and rejects the most treasured legends of popular
Catholic literature.
The study of the lives or legends of saints and martyrs is now
a science, hagiography (from hagios, or saint). It has engaged the
labors of hundreds of first-class scholars for the last hundred
years, and only a small minority of these have been Rationalists.
Leading Catholic scholars like Mgr. Duchesne, leading Protestant
scholars like Harnack, and scores of less prominent though more
concentrated workers have joined in the search.
The conditions of modern life have made the task easier than
it was in the days of Tillemont. One does not now lumber in a
stage-coach from Tours to Paris to consult a library, or brave the
terrors of the Macedonian hills or the Syrian deserts to see a
manuscript that lies in the dust of an ancient monastery. Modern
transport takes the martyr-slayer over the whole field in a month;
and he then prints the new manuscript he has discovered in some
sleepy Greek or Syrian monastery, and a hundred experts get to work
on it.
The result may be seen in such a work as Dr. Albert Ehrhard's
"Die altchristliche Literature" Ehrhard is a Catholic, but he
summarizes and entirely endorses the work of the critics. He gives
the authors and titles of more than a hundred books and essays
dealing critically with the martyrs. Neumann, he tells you, has
made a special study of all the legends of martyrs under the
Emperor Commodus, and has found the whole of them spurious except
two or three. Fuhrer has thoroughly studied what was thought to be
the sound story of St. Felicitas and her seven sons, and has shown
that two quite different legends have been blended, so that the
saint really only got her "seven sons" in the Middle Ages.
Delehaye, a Jesuit, has made a special study of the martyrs of the
Roman Church and has found that all the "Acts" of them -- including
such treasured memories as St. Agnes and St. Cecilia -- are late
compilations which do not even profess to quote earlier
authorities.
Let me note here one particular result of this criticism which
will amuse the reader. So deep-rooted is the belief that Christian
martyrs were exposed to the lions in the Amphitheater (now called
the Coliseum) of ancient Rome that even Bernard Shaw built upon the
legend one of those plays ("Androcles and the Lion") in which he
teaches us how to write history. It appears that twenty years
before Mr. Shaw took up the theme, Father Delehaye had proved in
his book "L'amphitheatre Flavien et ses environs (1897) that no
Christian was ever exposed to the lions in the Coliseum! I have not
been able to consult the book, but the Catholic Dr. Ehrhard tells
us this. The "acts of the martyrs" of the Roman Church in
particular are amongst the most spurious of all. Yet Catholic
writers continue to tell Catholic readers how Gelasius (or Damasus)
warned the faithful not to read spurious books, and ask them to
believe that the authorities of the Church were ever on the watch.
On the contrary, as we shall see, Rome was the main center of the
manufacture of spurious documents.
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Duchesne particularly studied the martyrs of his own country,
France, and few of them kept their crowns and halos. Ehrhard
studied the Greek martyrs, and they melted one by one into myth.
One man, Professor von Gebhardt, spent almost a lifetime in
studying the "Acts of Paul and Thecla" and, says Father Delehaye,
"the result shows us the fatal lot reserved for hagiographical
documents which have long been esteemed." Professor Usener and
others showed that pagan deities had been dressed up as Christian
martyrs. Others took up the study of the "saintly" actors who, as
pagans, refused to parody Christianity on the stage, and wiped out
all their naughtiness of a long and happy life by martyrdom; yet
one legend, which proved popular, was the basis of all the stories
(St. Genesius, St. Gelasinus, St. Ardalion, St. Porphyrius, St.
Philemon, etc.).
Father Delehaye's works are -- if he will pardon the
expression -- even more entertaining. Never before was such
ruthless devastation so cheerfully perpetrated. Father Delehaye
sits in the middle of the field which is strewn with the corpses of
the "martyrs" and he smiles as only a Jesuit can. Of course, you
understand the smile. It is the smile of the tennis-player who has
been beaten and wants to put a good face on it. It is to reassure,
to retain Catholics. Nothing to worry about in the least, he says.
We have to give up the old legends; but it was all very natural,
and quite lovely and charming.
The learned Jesuit is a Bollandist; that is to say, he is a
member of the permanent committee or association of Jesuit saint-
describers of the Catholic Church who (under the lead of Father
Bolland, of the seventeenth century) compiled the most monumental
collection of saints ever put together. Up to the time when the
French Revolution checked its pious work, it had published fifty-
three enormous volumes, telling the stories of more than twenty-
five thousand beautiful saints and martyrs. What other church or
religion in the world could get together such a concentrated mass
of fragrant holiness? When Gibbon elegantly observed of the work
that "through the medium of fable and superstition it communicates
much historical and philosophical instruction," white hands were
raised to heaven. It was supernatural. Now we have the modern
Bollandist pleasantly endorsing Gibbon. It was all quite natural.
He insists on that: because the only alternative today is
deliberate deceit and forgery.
Naturally we want to know how many genuine stories, how many
accounts which on ordinary historical canons would be regarded as
reliable, have survived this stupendous massacre of the martyrs. In
most of the works of these hagiographers this most important point
is evaded. No Catholic dare write a new "Acts of the Saints," with
a proper respect for truthfulness.
I have not included any of my own modest efforts in the way of
martyr-slaying; though the reader will find, if he cares, that in
the earlier chapters of my "Crises in the History of the Papacy" I
have exposed many. I have shown that Roman Popes who died
comfortably in their beds (after equivocal lives) are honored as
"Saints and Martyrs." I have shown that even anti-Popes and their
supporters, slain by Christians in the bloody fights for the Papal
throne (which I show in another book), are in the Martyrology. But
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I have preferred here to get together the admissions of Christian
and Catholic scholars and help the reader to draw a few clear and
sound inferences.
One point of primary importance is to ascertain what
proportion of the martyrs survives the modern ordeal. You are never
told that, but Father Delehaye's book enables you to form an idea.
It is, surely, the gravest part of his work as an apologist, a
Jesuit, to assure his Catholic readers that a sufficiently large
number of the best known saints are described to us in genuine or
nearly contemporary documents. Well, from that point of view his
work is feeble and scanty. I will give my final conclusions here:
1. Less than one in one hundred of the "early martyrs" can be
proved to have died for his religion or even existed in it.
2. Ninety-nine statements in one hundred, at least, in the
lives of the martyrs are lies on somebody's part; and we can prove
that the writers were almost always clerics.
3. The Christians, when they obtained power, made more
"martyrs" in a century than they had had in three centuries, and in
the next one thousand years they made hundreds of times more
martyrs than the Romans had made if we include Jews, witches,
Albigensians, etc., as we ought, thousands of times more.
No, no, says the Jesuit, gently, you must not use these harsh
words. Stories of the martyrs were handed down, and such things
grow naturally in the course of time. Then someone puts them on
parchment, and they circulate. And copyists are careless, or they
shift remarks on the margin into the text, or they feel that it is
a work of piety and edification to touch up the narrative here and
there. So the stories get into quite different versions in the east
and the west, and the great legend-writers of the fifth and later
centuries tried to blend different versions and insert every detail
they found mentioned anywhere.
A very large part of this polite hagiographical talk is bunk:
a mere cloak for Christian lying. Let us freely admit the large
part due to the natural play of the imagination and to such
alterations by copyists as we should not harshly call forgeries.
But there is a limit both to the spontaneous enlargement of memory
by imagination and to the "license of honest copyists."
Hagiographers will not elicit much sympathy from the modern
world unless they use plain English. Father Delehaye does select
few, a very few, of the most extravagant medieval myth-makers and
permits us to call them liars and forgers. For the others, since
the charge would brand every section of both Latin and Greek
Churches for several centuries, we are to use milder language even
to admire their simple piety and zeal to edify the faithful. At one
moment we are told that great martyr-describers like the Greek
Metaphrastes always used some kind of manuscript source. At another
time, when there obviously was no source, Father Delehaye wonders
if the fabricator meant his story to be taken as a real account of
the Martyr! One might as well "wonder if the Popes and bishops and
priests, who saw these things taken literally all over Europe for
a thousand years, wondered if people really believed them. Any man
who questioned them was in danger of the stake.
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